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Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

This chapter tells the story of the initiation, development (over two decades) and collective contribution of the Copenhagen Forum since its foundation in 1996. This Forum comprises a grouping of teachers and directors of masters-level public administrative programmes (notably the MPA) from different academic institutions across Northern Europe. Each year a workshop is convened where a series of papers are presented by the participants, and from which this volume, and a number of other related publications, have been derived.

The chapter is essentially factual and descriptive in style; summarising the story of the Copenhagen Forum so far; doing so under the following five headings – ‘overview’, ‘origins’, ‘odyssey’, ‘outputs’ and ‘outcomes’.

The chapter is particularly oriented towards teachers of public administration and by focusing on the pedagogical aspects of the public management programmes that they are responsible for delivering, provides insights, guidance and suggestions from experience to help them develop their practice.

The aim is to provide readers with an appreciation of the context from which the inspiration for this volume, and the individual contributions, derive. It is a context that has been all about a shared fascination with, and collective commitment to, the advancement of learning and development among practicing public managers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse three innovative Master's programmes designed for public and voluntary sector managers across three EU countries.

The paper compares similarities and differences between the programmes in order to shed light on the “innovation journey” which the authors took in establishing these programmes, and on the distinctive pedagogies which have been designed and developed to help address the complex dilemmas and challenges facing public and voluntary sector managers in the three countries.

The paper draws on theories of innovation and entrepreneurship to illustrate how these programmes were created, and how both new curriculum content and new approaches to pedagogy had to be developed.

The paper addresses the current and future learning needs of these public and voluntary service managers.

Investigating some enriching perspectives on mid-career PSM and UrbEd ‘teaching, researching and innovation’ (Public Sector Management; Urban Education).

Alternative approaches, analyses, designs and methods (1) focused on national and local problems and policies, (2) to be reconstructed, researched, taught and enriched in practice-oriented MEd-courses for mid-careerists and (3) which might strengthen their capacities to shift from reflection in action to reflection on action. Two decades of UrbEd and PSM experiences in Amsterdam and Rotterdam are analysed. New perspectives – Social Quality and Artistic Empowerment initiatives – are assessed. The implications for current and future higher education policies and perspectives are then considered.

Initiatives implemented since the 1980s are bearing fruit. These address urban problems, foster innovation, enhance mid-career education and enable cross-border initiatives such as Social Quality measures. Such measures are well supported at the moment by practice-oriented policies at Applied Science Universities (ASUs).

The chapter’s recommendations might incite lecturers, (mid-career-) professionals of ASUs and local managers and authorities to intensify their cooperation with urban renewal projects and vice versa.

In spite of decades of focus on decision making and decades of research on cross‐cultural management, few authors have devoted attention to the combination of decision making and specific cultural settings. The focus of this paper is the decision‐making processes in French and Danish companies. Results from empirical data indicate that there are clear differences in the ways decisions are arrived at in terms of how managers emphasize different phases of the decision‐making process. The analysis also shows what happens when different stages become the responsibility of people in different roles within the organisation. In the analysis, the importance of decision rationality is discussed, and the different cultural styles are linked to the classical theories in decision making such as economic man, administrative man, and muddling through. Since these are found inadequate to characterize French and Danish actual behaviour, new models are suggested under the labels of emotional man and action man.

The Institute dates back to 1952 when Torben Agersnap started at the Copenhagen School of Economics and Social Sciences. By 1969 it had a staff of three researchers, but in the following years it has grown rapidly. Today the Institute comprises a staff of two full professors, seven associate professors and nine research fellows all on the payroll of the School. In addition there is a staff of about five researchers on various grants and projects.